Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Korean War ◽  
State System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
The Korean War

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book tells a story of the changing script of warfare in the mid-twentieth century through the Korean War. At stake in this conflict was not simply the usual question of territorial sovereignty and the nation-state. The heart of the struggles revolved around the question of political recognition, the key relational dynamic that formed the foundation for the post-1945 nation-state system. This book argues that in order to understand how the act of recognition became the essential terrain of war, one must step away from the traditional landscape of warfare—the battlefield—and into the interrogation room.

A Not-yet-postcolonial Peninsula: Rewriting Spaces of Violence, Division and Diaspora

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-87
Author(s):  
Jini Kim Watson
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Korean American ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Childhood Home ◽  
Historical Accounts

In his controversial 2001 novel,The Guest(Sonnim), Hwang Sok-yong tells the story of elderly Korean American Ryu Yosŏp, who embarks on a journey back to his childhood home in Hwanghae province, now North Korea. At once a spatial, temporal, and psychological return, the novel revisits the early years of the Korean War to unveil the truth behind one of the war’s most horrific crimes: the slaughter of 35,000 Korean civilians in the Shinch’on massacre of 1950. In particular, Hwang examines the arrival of the two “guests” of the title—Christianity and Marxism—during the colonial period and their subsequent role in the violence of Shinch’on. By making visible forms of political agency achieved through the assimilation of these two guests, the novel complicates the ideological binaries that appear to have arrested decolonization of the Korean peninsula. Watson’s article reveals how Hwang’s experimental, multivocal narrative structure rewrites usual historical accounts of the Korean War and division by attending to the spatialized production of regions, nation, state, and diaspora. It offers a rethinking of the congealed ideologies, stories, desires, and topologies of this not-yet-postcolonial peninsular.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Carol V. R. George
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Business Community ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Meaningful Connections

TO MANY THOUGHTFUL Americans in the closing years of the twentieth century, the statistical evidence on the health of the culture speaks of a giant, fatal cancer, steadily and inexorably destroying the quality of life that was familiar and comfortable to anyone born before the Korean War. The data, regularly published in the press as if to titillate morbid sensibilities, confirm that one’s personal experience with social disruption is general: Marriages and families increasingly fragile; children of all ages appear more at risk; the elderly live longer, hollower lives; ethnic groups battle each other for an even smaller part of the national pie; women and men weary of ever understanding each other; and national resources and prestige decline as the business community grows paralyzed from competition, complacency, and cultural pollution. There are people in middle life to whom it seems difficult to remember a brighter day, when life promised hope, a future of meaningful connections, and children had a right to large dreams. Who could think positively about the future?...

5. Competing states, diverging societies

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Michael J. Seth
Keyword(s):  
Blood Culture ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Korean People ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Korean Nation

By 1953 almost all Koreans had accepted that they belonged to a single nation united by blood, culture, history, and destiny. However, the end of the Korean War left them divided into two states. ‘Competing states, diverging societies’ explains that each state shared the same goal of creating a prosperous, modern, unified Korean nation-state that would be politically autonomous and internationally respected. The leadership of each saw the division as temporary and themselves and the state they governed as the true representative of the aspirations of the Korean people, and the legitimate successor to the pre-colonial state. While sharing many of the same goals they followed very different paths to reach them and became ever more divergent societies.

scholarly journals A Nation of One: A Critical Analysis of the Rise of the Notion of Ethnocultural Oneness in Twentieth-Century Korea

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Josiah Gabriel Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Korean People ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
The People ◽  
The Korean War

This essay has been written to critically explore the societal idealization of oneness held among the Korean people. Particular emphasis is paid to scholarly works published between the years 2010 and 2016. The central finding procured by reviewing works meeting this study’s inclusion criteria suggests that the notion of ethnocultural oneness is a modern myth structured along the political ideologies of the state. As such, attention is duly afforded to the historic origins of oneness and how this perception emerged in the twentieth century as a response to the period of Japanese colonization (1910-1945), the Korean War (1950-1953), and the years (1960-1988) in which Korea experienced rapid industrial development. It is assumed that the knowledge generated from this study may be used to (a) extend critical discourse on Korea’s cultural history, (b) provide an alternative view on the formation of Korea’s national identity, and (c) illuminate taken for granted perceptions that have been propagated among the people of Korea in the twentieth century as means to promote a sense of togetherness.

Framing Violence, Framing Victims: Picasso's Forgotten Painting of the Korean War

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Keene
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Great Work ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Insight Into

Picasso produced a large canvas, Massacre en Corée in early 1951 in response to reports of massacres taking place in the Korean War. Although, by then, he was probably the most famous painter of the twentieth century and his great work on the Spanish civil war, Guernica, enjoyed considerable renown, Picasso's Korean war painting was largely passed over at the time and has been forgotten, much as used to be the case of the Korean war itself. This article, using Judith Butler's insight into the effects of the frames that define an image, offers an explanation for the contemporary reading and the reception of Picasso's Massacre in Korea.

The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Kim
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
Vast Range

Traditional histories of the Korean War have long focused on violations of the thirty-eighth parallel, the line drawn by American and Soviet officials in 1945 dividing the Korean peninsula. But this book presents an entirely new narrative, shifting the perspective from the boundaries of the battlefield to inside the interrogation room. The book demonstrates how the Korean War evolved from a fight over territory to one over human interiority and the individual human subject, forging the template for the US wars of intervention that would predominate during the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. The book looks at how, during the armistice negotiations, the United States and their allies proposed a new kind of interrogation room: one in which prisoners of war could exercise their “free will” and choose which country they would go to after the ceasefire. The global controversy that erupted exposed how interrogation rooms had become a flashpoint for the struggles between the ambitions of empire and the demands for decolonization, as the aim of interrogation was to produce subjects who attested to a nation's right to govern. The complex web of interrogators and prisoners that the book uncovers contradicts the simple story in US popular memory of “brainwashing” during the Korean War. Bringing together a vast range of sources that track two generations of people moving between three continents, the book delves into an essential yet overlooked aspect of modern warfare in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Wybrane komponenty współczesnej mentalności koreańskiej związane z grzecznością

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 219-231
Author(s):  
Chang Il You
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Korean History ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
The Impact

Selected components of contemporary Korean mentality related to politeness In the twentieth century, Korea had a violent change in its history. Initially, Korea lost its independence and became a Japanese colony. It regained freedom after the defeat of Japan, but soon, the Korean War broke out. From that time until today, Korea has been divided into two parts: the southern one and the northern one. After the war, South Korea was a country under military dictatorship for a long time. South Korea after the Korean War belonged to one of the poorest countries over the world. In the present time, however, South Korea has become a country that has a great impact on the global economy. This change in history had a huge impact (positively and negatively) on the mentality of Koreans. The aim of my article is to present the economic development of South Korea from a Confucian point of view and to analyze the impact of Korean history in the twentieth century on the mentality of Koreans and its operation in Korean society (work ethos and ethos of science, Korean language, etc.).

Greater Britain or Greater Synthesis? Seeley, Mackinder, and Wells on Britain in the global industrial era

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL DEUDNEY
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
State System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Special Relationship ◽  
National Integration ◽  
Geographic Factors ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
New Perspective

At the zenith of British power at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a widespread recognition that Britain's position in the emerging global industrial inter-state system was increasingly precarious and that widespread adjustments would be needed. One solution, the ‘imperial federalism’ of Seeley and Mackinder, proposed the political integration of the scattered British settler colonies into a ‘Greater Britain’. Alternatively, Wells predicted that Britain would become integated into an Anglo-American ‘greater synthesis’, and that Europe would be unified on ‘Swiss confederal’ rather than German authoritarian lines. These proposals and prophesies were based upon interpretations of the changing material context composed of technology interacting with geography, and were seriously flawed. Extensive debates on these schemes indicate that the range of grand strategic choice was broader than that conceptualized by contemporary realism. The failure of British national integration due to geographic factors and the endurance of the Anglo-American special relationship casts the roles of the nation-state and the Western liberal order in a new perspective.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Trais Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Direct Interaction ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
Unnatural Death ◽  
The Social ◽  
Imperial Power

This introductory chapter briefly discusses the major themes of this book. It argues that the investigation of unnatural death was an early—and unlikely—site of direct interaction between the state and its subjects. Furthermore, the chapter illustrates how the emergence of a necropolitical regime at the turn of the twentieth century offered a troubling rebuke to the master narrative of modern Thai historiography: namely, the doctrine of Siamese/Thai exceptionalism. Thailand's status as the only nation-state in Southeast Asia to avoid direct control by European imperial power marks it as a singular state with an exceptional past. And it is within this context that the chapter addresses certain morbid subjects—alluding not merely to death but also to the social, cultural, and political lives of the dead.

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